No my friends it is not the ever-present hacker (and last line of defense against the threat of totalitarian governments)

it is not the flooder, with modern ignore technology they are barely even noted.

Nor is it even the stupid damn servers WHO REFUSE TO WORK ALL THE DAMN TIME AND THEN DECIDE TO SPLIT AND HAVE THE ENTIRE NETWRK STOP RUNNING

*takes a deep breath*

No my friend, the scourge of IRC, is the advertiser bot. Ops wage a constant war against these things, while trying to keep channel open for the chatting.

Into this war, steps a nameless fool nick = okcool channel = #sheep server = irc.webchat.org . This nameless fool is founder in a nameless channel. And on this channel, in his finite wisdom, he gave AOP to an advertisement bot.

I’m marking this down, as another reason why there should be an IQ test before people are allowed to register channels.

Looking through the fractured glass a stranger peers at me. Who is this person peering at me, blood dripping down her face? Who is this person who looks at me with such despair, such anger, such vengeance in her eyes?

This is the person who defeated me. This is the person who beat me down time after time, never letting me up. Screaming out.

I hate you. I love you

Tears leaking out of her face. Is she crying? Who is she? I love her.

A perfect face marred by old scares still bleeding, focused by eyes older then her years, younger then she deserves.

She screams.

You killed me

A sudden blow, the fractured glass shatters. I fall way from her and lie on the cold floor.

Why? Who are you? I hate you! Why?

Her hand creeps to my throat, a voice whispers

I love you. Why wont you let me go?

I cry I thrash

I love you. Stop, your hurting me.

The hands clench tighter

Why

The voice demands

Why

My head bounces off the floor again and again.

Why?
You killed me!
I hate you! I love you.

The hands release and I flop to the floor. My eyes open and I see her reflected in broken glass. Poetic to her eyes so full of pain.

There was an old married couple that had lived happily together for nearly forty years. The only friction in their marriage was caused by the husband's habit of breaking wind

Nearly every morning as he awoke. The noise would always wake up his wife and the smell would cause her eyes to water as she would choke and gasp for air. Nearly every morning she would plead with him to stop ripping one in the morning.

He told her he couldn't help it. She begged him to see a doctor to see if anything could be done, but the husband wouldn't hear of it. He told her that it was just a natural bodily function and then he would laugh in her face as she tried to wave the fumes away with her hands.

She told him that there was nothing natural about it and if he didn't stop, he was one day going to "fart his guts out." The years went by and the wife continued to suffer and the husband continued to ignore her warnings about "farting his guts out," until one Thanksgiving morning.

Before dawn the wife went downstairs to prepare the family feast. She fixed pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, gravy, and of course a turkey. When she was taking out the turkey's innards, a thought occurred to the wife as to how she might solve her husband's problem.

With a devilish grin on her face, she placed the turkey guts into a bowl and quietly walked upstairs hours before her husband would awake. While he was still soundly asleep, she pulled back the covers and then gently pulled back her husband's jockey shorts. She then placed all of the turkey guts into her husband's underwear, pulled them back up, replaced the covers, and tiptoed back downstairs to finish preparing the family meal.

Several hours later she heard her husband awake with his normal loud butt-trumpeting. This was soon followed by a blood-curdling scream and the sound of frantic footsteps as her husband ran to the upstairs bathroom. The wife could not control herself and her eyes began to tear up as she rolled on the floor laughing. After years of putting up with him she had finally gotten even.

About twenty minutes later, her husband came downstairs in his blood-stained underpants with a look of horror in his eyes. She bit her lip to keep from laughing and asked him what was the matter. He said, "Honey, you were right - all those years you warned me and I wouldn't listen to you." "What do you mean," asked his wife. "Well you always told me that I would end up farting my guts out one of these days and today it finally happened.

But, by the grace of God and these two fingers, I think I got them all back in."